Training Example: Brodie Clark Consulting – Review the Data, Give Your Score & Compare to the Real AI Evaluation

Market-leading clients across various sectors
[IMG: Shutterstock]
[IMG: Shutterstock]
Shutterstock "Even when you have a fantastic in-house SEO team, it is always helpful to get additional insights and an "outside view" into complex SEO issues that may arise. Brodie's insights, top-notch recommendations, and innovative SEO knowledge were amazing to help with strategy and solutions." Global Head of SEO Sara Resnick
[IMG: Stuff]
[IMG: Drive.com.au]
[IMG: Drive.com.au]
Drive.com.au "Brodie's expertise was immensely helpful for us at Drive.com.au on a high stakes project. His unbiased, experience based feedback helped us achieve a positive SEO outcome. Throughout the project, Brodie was a pleasure to work with, his responsiveness and attention to detail a key highlight of our experience." Technology Director Kartik Rao
[IMG: Hewlett-Packard]
[IMG: Tripadvisor]
[IMG: Tripadvisor]
Tripadvisor "Brodie is an awesome partner! His super-deep SEO expertise, meticulous quantitative analysis, and creative recommendations helped Tripadvisor frame our strategy around presenting the most exciting travel guidance content to hundreds of millions of travellers each month." Director of Growth Colin Barry
[IMG: Zooplus]
[IMG: Nine]
[IMG: 9News]
9News "Brodie is one of the best minds in SEO. Even though we have a great in-house team, it's always helpful to get an external point of view on your SEO strategies. SEO is constantly evolving and working with someone like Brodie is unparalleled. His ability to provide fresh insights into complex SEO issues was an invaluable asset to our work, team and strategy. Highly recommend!" Head of Search, Digital Sindy Nguyen
[IMG: Bed Bath N]
[IMG: Bed Bath N]
Bed Bath N' Table "Brodie has been a wonderful SEO partner. His expert knowledge, analysis and recommendations has helped us solve some complex SEO ranking issues, resulting in significant growth for the channel. He is an absolute pleasure to work with, professional, dedicated and an excellent communicator. We see Brodie as a critical part of our team and ongoing strategy." Digital Marketing Stephanie Bowland
[IMG: eBay Kleinanzeigen]
[IMG: Evo]
[IMG: City Beach]
[IMG: Airtasker]
[IMG: AutoGuru]
[IMG: Pets4Homes]
[IMG: Webjet]
[IMG: Envato]
[IMG: Airwallex]
[IMG: Better Homes & Gardens]
[H2] Global SEO expertise for well-known, mid- to large-sized companies
Brodie Clark is Australia's best-known name in Search Engine Optimisation, offering advanced SEO consulting for market-leading brands such as Tripadvisor, Shutterstock, HP.com, eBay Kleinanzeigen, Zooplus, 9News, Bed Bath N’ Table, Drive.com.au, and more. With over a decade of SEO experience, Brodie was the Young Search Professional of the Year for 2019, a top SEO expert in 2021, a Search Awards judge for 2022, a Backlinko top creator in 2024, a Google Search Central Live speaker at Australia's first event, and the top Australian SEO expert for 2026. Brodie is regularly featured in top SEO publications and demand for his SEO Consulting in Melbourne and internationally is high. Browse to learn more about Brodie’s SEO consulting experience, achievements, what clients and other reputable thought-leaders have to say about his work, along with the latest blog articles. If you’re interested in working together, please feel free to submit an enquiry.
[IMG: brodie clark consulting seo consultant conference speaker]
Brodie Clark is a Melbourne-based SEO consultant with global recognition as an SEO conference speaker.
[H2] SEO service specialties when working with clients
[IMG: Technical SEO icon]
Technical SEO A strong technical foundation is a requirement for domains with hundreds of thousands or millions of pages. Aspects such as robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, site performance, and structured data can all be contributors to organic rankings. Featured client
[IMG: Ecommerce SEO icon]
Ecommerce SEO Large eCommerce stores come with SEO challenges, especially when you have thousands of products across various regions. Ranking within free product listings with GMC Next, pagination, and having a PDP/PLP strategy are important considerations. Featured client
[IMG: Marketplace SEO icon]
Marketplace SEO Online marketplaces require a specialist skill set to effectively use and scale platform-specific data for SEO. Including optimising listing or classified pages, using UGC, having a “near me” strategy, or minimising page exclusions, every aspect counts. Featured client
[IMG: Aggregator SEO icon]
Aggregator SEO When bringing together datasets from various external sources, it can be difficult to maintain quality and provide a USP. Having crossover disciplines among eCommerce and Marketplaces, Aggregator platforms play an important role in Search. Featured client
[IMG: News SEO icon]
News SEO The landscape on Google for news publishers is vastly different to other types of websites. Surfaces such as Top Stories, Google News, the ‘News’ tab, and Discover make up the primary features for traffic-generation for large news publishers. Featured client
[IMG: Image SEO icon]
Image SEO Gaining targeted visitors from Image Search is a common traffic source, with aspects such as image thumbnails within Web Search bringing an extra layer of complexity. Image SEO allows sites to gain more visibility for an important on-site asset. Featured client
[IMG: International SEO icon]
International SEO While I'm based in Melbourne, most of the SEO projects I work on are global businesses. There is a lot of nuance involved when operating on a global scale, with the core foundation being crucial to get right. This goes far beyond just using hreflang. Featured client
[IMG: AI Search icon]
AI Search GEO, AEO, AI SEO, whichever is your favourite acronym. AI Search is an emerging channel that I track heavily and have been documenting its progression since the inception of ChatGPT. There are often insights here that can be gleaned to complement your SEO.
[IMG: Technical SEO icon]
Technical SEO A strong technical foundation is a requirement for domains with hundreds of thousands or millions of pages. Aspects such as robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, site performance, and structured data can all be contributors to organic rankings. Featured client
[IMG: Ecommerce SEO icon]
Ecommerce SEO Large eCommerce stores come with SEO challenges, especially when you have thousands of products across various regions. Ranking within free product listings with GMC Next, pagination, and having a PDP/PLP strategy are important considerations. Featured client
[IMG: Marketplace SEO icon]
Marketplace SEO Online marketplaces require a specialist skill set to effectively use and scale platform-specific data for SEO. Including optimising listing or classified pages, using UGC, having a “near me” strategy, or minimising page exclusions, every aspect counts. Featured client
[IMG: Aggregator SEO icon]
Aggregator SEO When bringing together datasets from various external sources, it can be difficult to maintain quality and provide a USP. Having crossover disciplines among eCommerce and Marketplaces, Aggregator platforms play an important role in Search. Featured client
[IMG: News SEO icon]
News SEO The landscape on Google for news publishers is vastly different to other types of websites. Surfaces such as Top Stories, Google News, the ‘News’ tab, and Discover make up the primary features for traffic-generation for large news publishers. Featured client
[IMG: Image SEO icon]
Image SEO Gaining targeted visitors from Image Search is a common traffic source, with aspects such as image thumbnails within Web Search bringing an extra layer of complexity. Image SEO allows sites to gain more visibility for an important on-site asset. Featured client
[IMG: International SEO icon]
International SEO While I'm based in Melbourne, most of the SEO projects I work on are global businesses. There is a lot of nuance involved when operating on a global scale, with the core foundation being crucial to get right. This goes far beyond just using hreflang. Featured client
[IMG: AI Search icon]
AI Search GEO, AEO, AI SEO, whichever is your favourite acronym. AI Search is an emerging channel that I track heavily and have been documenting its progression since the inception of ChatGPT. There are often insights here that can be gleaned to complement your SEO.
[IMG: Brodie Clark - Serp Timeline]
[IMG: Brodie Clark - Serp Timeline]
14 May Google is now showing a trending brand label attached to some stores within the new product grid ads. This is a point of difference for the new product grid ads for standing out against free listing results within grids. 11 May Google is testing out a new treatment for snippets in mobile search results. The test features the domain name (which is simplified without sub-folders on mobile already) with a darker https:// and the domain name in lighter text. 10 May Google is now starting to show the new display for embedded links within AI overviews and AI Mode. When hovering over links that have a blue underline, a preview of the snippet now appears within a bubble. First discovered by Sachin Patel. 06 May Google is experimenting with new ways to represent embedded links within AI Mode. Normally, when citations show that reference content, it will show the favicon and the website name, with embedded links just appearing as underlined in blue. With this new test, the embedded links now also show with a larger favicon. This was first discovered by Sachin Patel, who also spotted a variation that features the embedded links with a black underline with a black link icon beside it. 05 May Google’s UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) has now expanded outside of AI Mode and has started appearing in the main section of search results. This example also shows the ads that are showing directly above the free listings, which have expanded rapidly in recent days. 27 Apr Google is testing out a new AI label attached to some ads on mobile. No additional information is provided after clicking on the AI label. There are two variations of this experiment so far, one with the AI label having a rounded background and the other with an information icon beside the AI text. 26 Apr Google is again testing out integrating a Web Guide equivalent outside of labs for some users. This test originally surfaced last month and looks to be returning once again. 25 Apr Google is now testing out a new display for AI overviews on desktop. Instead of the standard display that features the ‘show more’ button to expand, AI overviews are instead automatically showing in full, displaying a sticky AI mode chatbox in order to encourage entering the experience. This experiment is a continuation of the AI mode overlay we saw earlier in the month. 23 Apr Google has now expanded its audio overviews labs experiment to users more broadly, now showing outside of the labs experience in the US. Essentially every time an AI overview result appears at the top of the page, the play bar either shows directly below it or partway down the page. Once you click the play button, there is a delay before the citations appear for where the audio is being referenced. Watch and listen to this video to get an idea of how it works. 20 Apr Google is now displaying sponsored ads within free listing grid results in the Shopping tab. This is following ads first appearing within grid results in AI Mode, in the main section of search results, and now within the Shopping tab.
[H2] Trusted globally by the best-of- the-best in SEO
[H3] John Mueller
Senior Search Analyst at “Brodie regularly does awesome stuff that I even pass on to folks internally at Google”
[H3] Aleyda Solis
SEO Consultant at Orainti & Founder at Remoters “Brodie is one of the smartest and nicest strategical SEOs, always willing to share his excellent findings and insights with the community! I wouldn't doubt to hire him for in-depth SEO analysis and reliable consulting or advice.”
[H3] Cyrus Shepard
SEO Consultant at Moz & Founder at Zyppy "Brodie has impressed me time and time again with his in-depth knowledge of Google SERPs, algorithm changes, and optimization techniques. If I had the chance to hire Brodie, I wouldn't hesitate."
[H2] Common questions that I get asked
Do you do white-label projects for agencies or other digital professionals? No. I'm a independent SEO consultant that only works with clients directly. If you have a client who you think would be interested in my services, I do encourage reaching out to discuss if the project is a good fit, but your client would need to contact me directly. I may however know a suitable freelance SEO consultant that works with agencies that I could recommend. Do you also work with clients that are based outside of Melbourne and Australia? While I am known for being a Melbourne-based SEO Consultant, I do also regularly work with clients throughout Australia and globally. I've worked with clients in the US, Canada, the UK, and also countries where English isn't their first language and they're wanting to internationalise. So yes, I'm an SEO Consultant in Melbourne, but I operate internationally. Do you work with small businesses who are just getting started with SEO? These types of projects generally aren't a good fit for what I offer. I am however well-connected in the SEO world and can make a trusted recommendation for an SEO agency or another freelance SEO consultant for you to work with, whether that be an SEO Consultant Melbourne or an SEO Expert Australia and internationally. If your job title includes that you're the 'Head of Growth', 'Director of Growth' or similar, and you work for a company that's considered in the mid- to large-sized range, you're a well-suited client for my SEO consultancy. How much do your SEO consulting services cost? It really depends on the requirements for the SEO project, along with the size, complexity, and amount of traffic for your site or. My rate is however higher than your typical SEO consultant due to my experience and knowledge of the SEO space. My SEO consulting pricing is the same rate for both Melbourne SEO projects along with Australian and internationally. What types of SEO clients do you normally work with and specialise in? I work with most types of sites, aside from Local SEO projects that are focused around optimising Google Business Profiles and also SaaS providers. I also explicitly don't work with anything gambling-related. Some of my interest areas include working with marketplaces, eCommerce businesses, and also news publishers and large-scale content publishers of various kinds. What do SEO consultants do? And how are they different from agencies? An SEO consultant is an experienced expert in the field of search engine optimization, delivering tailored advice for websites that rely on exposure through Google's organic search results. The goal of an SEO consultant is to help customers find your

Table of Contents What is SERP Lens?Finding the Right Co-FounderTech StackOvercoming ChallengesGetting a TrademarkApple Developer AccountWindows App Development Launch Video CreationLaunch DayIterations Based on FeedbackFinal Thoughts Last month, Sam and I reached a major milestone in launching our web browser for SEO named SERP Lens. I wanted to write this blog post to reflect on the journey as transparently as I can and hopefully encourage others to also challenge themselves and try something new. The difficult truth is that it was much more difficult than we imagined and took longer to build than we expected, with many setbacks along the way. We both have our own separate businesses, where I’m an independent SEO consultant, and Sam runs his own successful SaaS, so finding the time to dedicate to it was a challenge in itself. In reality, it took us just under 2 years from the time that we agreed on the business name to when we were able to launch the product. I wish it could have been shorter, but we at least went about it in a way that was somewhat within our original budget, and I’m very proud of the final product that is currently in its public beta. Within this post, I will be giving a breakdown of what SERP Lens is, the importance of finding the right co-founder, the tech stack behind the application, the major challenges we encountered, some of the iterations we’ve completed based on feedback, and how launch day went.
[H2] What is SERP Lens?
We want SERP Lens to be known as the web browser for SEO. We want to ideally carve out our own niche within the SEO tool market, like how Screaming Frog is known for website crawling, Keyword Insights is known for keyword research, and SEO Gets is known for SEO analytics. We will never be an all-in-one solution like Semrush or Ahrefs, but we do want it to be a tool that SEOs are using for their day-to-day work. The SERP Lens positioning is heavily geared towards being the ultimate SEO productivity tool, with a primary focus on technical analysis for the AI era. The application has a clean and consistent UI that you can customise how you like, with an in-built VPN and the ability to document findings and track performance. The tool currently has a base of useful tools, with our plans being to launch an MCP (Model Context Protocol) that will bring it all together and make insights even more actionable.
[IMG: keyboard shortcuts]
SERP Lens as an SEO productivity tool: ⌘⇧V (open VPN panel) and ⌘⌥1 (capture browser viewport)
[H2] Finding the Right Co-Founder
Sam and I have known each other for many years through the online SEO community, both originally being independent SEO consultants. I met Sam in person about 4 years ago at BrightonSEO where he shared some of the projects he had been working on behind-the-scenes. One of his projects (a SaaS he had acquired) ended up being very successful for him, which he then went on to work on full-time, allowing him to leave his consulting work completely. Here are some of the reasons why Sam is an awesome co-founder: Already have a good relationship + met through work Both at a similar point in life Strong problem-solving skills and an entrepreneurial mindset Similar SEO experience and skillset Complementary skills to mine (track record in SaaS, strong designer, and dev experience) Even though Sam’s background is in SEO, he is a brilliant product designer, with everything that you see within our browser being designed by him. Our team of devs (backend and frontend) are the same group that is used for his other businesses, meaning that they are able to work very efficiently on product iterations.
[H2] Tech Stack
SERP Lens is a Chromium-based Electron application that uses Payload as the headless CMS with Vercel and PlanetScale for cloud-based storage. We then use Mintlify for the management of our dev docs (Sam used Claude Code to develop ours based on our GitHub repos), Resend for product and marketing emails, and a combination of Sentry and PostHog for error tracking and analytics. Stripe is our payment processor, with Airwallex being used to manage our international accounts.
[H2] Overcoming Challenges
[H3] Getting a Trademark
The most time-consuming and challenging of all, which ended up costing much more than we anticipated, involved getting our trademark for the name “SERP LENS” through the UK IPO. The process took 8 months in total, with our team needing to involve IP attorneys both in Australia and the UK. We did not want to risk launching under our name and being at risk of trademark infringement, so we decided to go down the official path before launch to ensure we were in control of our own IP. Thankfully, we were able to get the result we wanted out of the process and have learned a lot along the way. While it took 8 months, this didn’t necessarily slow down our design and development efforts, though it did mean that there was a chance that we would need to rebrand after already investing in aspects such as the domain name serplens.com (which ended up being quite inexpensive compared to other costs), alongside the logo and potentially the icon used for the application. Also, we love the name, so we didn’t want to have to feel like we were downgrading.
[H3] Apple Developer Account
In the lead-up to our launch, which was meant to be in February instead of April, we realised that we were using the incorrect Apple Developer Account that was attached to our app. At the time, we didn’t consider this a major issue, because all we would need to do was open up a new account under SERP Lens Ltd and make the transfer… how wrong we were. Simply getting our new developer account verified took 2 months in total. Normally, this process would take around 7 days, but Apple’s automated systems have apparently been under strain of late due to an increase in vibe-coded applications, which has meant that the entire process can now take much more time. The difficult part of this entire process is that the communication from Apple’s end is effectively nonexistent, so you’re stuck with the thinking that “next week it is” for the entire time. Even though the account creation in itself took 2 months, we were at least still able to make improvements to our systems and run a closed beta testing period for a group of users, which ended up being very necessary for fleshing out onboarding issues and more. This 2-month period was extended by an additional 7 days while waiting for the app notarisation period for our first update under the new account, which was again meant to only take 24-48 hours. Stuck on this step for our first app notarisation (delay of 7 days).
[H3] Windows App Development
An aspect that needed to be balanced when developing desktop applications is the creation and maintenance of versions for different operating systems. Right now, we have only launched on MacOS (m-series and Intel) and have made a form available to submit interest for Windows and Linux. While the Windows application is almost complete, we have the challenge of understanding how we can get around obtaining the EV Code Signing, which should essentially prevent the pop-up warning when installing the application on Windows. This isn’t something that we want for users, but the requirement for obtaining the USB drive is that you are to supply a utility bill at the registered address for the business, which isn’t something we’re able to do with having a virtual address in London (like the vast majority of SaaS startups will have). There are some alternate options that may help with reducing the pop-up warning appearing for new installations, such as Microsoft Artifact Signing, but this option isn’t currently available to our location. We are now looking into other options for how to get around this issue and welcome feedback from anyone who has had success with earned reputation challenges when developing for Windows.
[H2] Launch Video Creation
The creation of our launch video was quite an important part of our launch strategy, being the most effective way that we could quickly communicate what our product is and who it is designed for. Here is the video if you wanted to take a look at it: For the creation of the video, I worked closely with a motion designer for around 6 weeks. The biggest challenge in developing the video was the requirement that any product previews needed to be within our Figma files, so essentially everything you see in the video (aside from one scene) required me to replicate a live view within the app using Figma. Thankfully, Sam had managed our files well over time, even when there were major restructures to be made to comply with constraints for the Chromium installation and the Electron app. Our Figma files were very useful for both this process and the product idea validation phase, where we had an interactive Figma view that looked like a real product that had each design component patched into what looked like a live app.
[H2] Launch Day
We received some great exposure from the SEO community in our first week, managing to pull in just over 4K visitors to our Marketing Site. Here’s what this looks like in PostHog, with the traffic being primarily based on my posts on LinkedIn, Twitter and through my newsletter SERP Alert. Traffic through to our Marketing Site as recorded by PostHog in the first week. The major driver of a lot of this was from my LinkedIn, which is by far the most important platform to be on within the SEO industry. Here’s a preview of my LinkedIn post: Following launch week, we received another big week of visibility thanks to people like Aleyda Solis (through SEOFOMO), Cyrus Shepard (runs an awesome SEO newsletter), Chris Long (runs a great AI Search/SEO Agency), Nick LeRoy (creator of the SEOForLunch Newsletter), and many others. While there are constraints to getting users to install a desktop application that is only available to macOS, we were able to gain a lot of interest in our first month of operation and now have a meaningful base of paid users, which we’re very thankful for. At the moment, we have a free 7-day trial in place for the ‘Lite’ plan ($29.99 p/mo after), where we will be looking to revise our approach over the coming weeks as we release several new features that have been available within our closed beta app.
[H2] Iterations Based on Feedback
Receiving feedback is extremely important for us to reach the point that we want to get to. After you’ve tested the application, we greatly appreciate anyone who takes the time to tell us features that they liked, what they didn’t like, and any ideas for any valuable features that they would like us to add to our roadmap (there are many awesome releases to come which can be tracked on our changelog). For instance, a question that came up during our initial release related to how we manage privacy, which we take very seriously at SERP Lens, where we don’t collect anything that we don’t need to, and we take extra measures to ensure your browsing experience is kept private. We wrote this blog post that lays everything out in a transparent way based on the information we collect, what we don’t, and why. Another example of the many changes we have made based on feedback relates to the VPN integration. Under every paid account, users have access to 7 VPN locations (across the UK, the US, and Europe primarily), but we realised that many users weren’t discovering this due to our UI: We have now laid this out more clearly, with a ‘free’ and ‘all’ tab which includes the premium locations that can be purchased for an additional $15 p/mo. Personally, I get a lot of value out of having a VPN integrated in the way that it has been within SERP Lens for various purposes, so I was glad to see how the team quickly made these changes so users could experience the free locations under their existing account and also within the trial period.
[H2] Final Thoughts
While I’m still working full-time as an independent consultant, primarily working with sites within the eCommerce and Marketplace segment, along with some news publishers, I’m looking forward to continuing to improve the product with our team and growing the business. SERP Lens fits in well with how I operate as a consultant, and I’m looking forward to seeing the community catch on to the idea and see the value that I receive from the app for my day-to-day work. If you would like to test out the application, you can do so by first downloading the app for macOS here and creating your account. If you select the ‘Lite’ plan, you can make use of the 7-day trial without credit card details being required. If you’re a Windows or Linux user, you can add your email here, and we can let you know once the app is available for your operating system. ShareTweetShare

May 2026 14 May Google is now showing a trending brand label attached to some stores within the new product grid ads. This is a point of difference for the new product grid ads for standing out against free listing results within grids. 11 May Google is testing out a new treatment for snippets in mobile search results. The test features the domain name (which is simplified without sub-folders on mobile already) with a darker https:// and the domain name in lighter text. 10 May Google is now starting to show the new display for embedded links within AI overviews and AI Mode. When hovering over links that have a blue underline, a preview of the snippet now appears within a bubble. First discovered by Sachin Patel. 06 May Google is experimenting with new ways to represent embedded links within AI Mode. Normally, when citations show that reference content, it will show the favicon and the website name, with embedded links just appearing as underlined in blue. With this new test, the embedded links now also show with a larger favicon. This was first discovered by Sachin Patel, who also spotted a variation that features the embedded links with a black underline with a black link icon beside it. 05 May Google’s UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) has now expanded outside of AI Mode and has started appearing in the main section of search results. This example also shows the ads that are showing directly above the free listings, which have expanded rapidly in recent days. Apr 2026 27 Apr Google is testing out a new AI label attached to some ads on mobile. No additional information is provided after clicking on the AI label. There are two variations of this experiment so far, one with the AI label having a rounded background and the other with an information icon beside the AI text. 26 Apr Google is again testing out integrating a Web Guide equivalent outside of labs for some users. This test originally surfaced last month and looks to be returning once again. 25 Apr Google is now testing out a new display for AI overviews on desktop. Instead of the standard display that features the ‘show more’ button to expand, AI overviews are instead automatically showing in full, displaying a sticky AI mode chatbox in order to encourage entering the experience. This experiment is a continuation of the AI mode overlay we saw earlier in the month. 23 Apr Google has now expanded its audio overviews labs experiment to users more broadly, now showing outside of the labs experience in the US. Essentially every time an AI overview result appears at the top of the page, the play bar either shows directly below it or partway down the page. Once you click the play button, there is a delay before the citations appear for where the audio is being referenced. Watch and listen to this video to get an idea of how it works. 20 Apr Google is now displaying sponsored ads within free listing grid results in the Shopping tab. This is following ads first appearing within grid results in AI Mode, in the main section of search results, and now within the Shopping tab. 17 Apr When using Chrome on desktop, clicking links within AI Mode will start to show the webpage side-by-side with the chat window. Previously, the links would take you directly to the website, they now open in a window that makes it feel like you haven’t left AI Mode. 03 Apr Google is testing out different button text attached to expanding AI overviews on mobile. Instead of the standard “Show more”, they are instead using variations with “Enter AI Mode“, “Chat with AI” and “Open“. 02 Apr Google is testing ads beyond AI Mode product grid results, now showing sponsored result ads within the main section of search results within the grids, which were previously designated for only organic listings. I was able to replicate the ads showing fairly consistently, with one ad and up to four ads in some instances. I was also able to replicate the AI Mode grid ads as reported on by SER, with examples featuring two ads and another with four ads. Here’s what it looks like on mobile. 01 Apr Google is now testing out a similar AI Mode overlay display on desktop that launched on mobile about a month ago. When clicking ‘show more’ as part of the AI overview result within the main section of Search, the overlay appears with an AI Mode title on the left that stays with the user until the section has been scrolled past. Going back to the normal search experience can be reversed by selecting the cross icon. Mar 2026 29 Mar Google is now testing out white citation cards within AI overviews instead of the standard blue cards on desktop. The change now draws more attention toward the in-answer bubble links that rolled out last month, which remain in blue with this experiment. This was first spotted by Sachin Patel. 23 Mar Google is testing out the new bubble link approach with embedded links in AI Mode. Instead of clicking through directly to the website when a brand is mentioned, the bubble link treatment now means the user has to click again if they want to visit the website. 16 Mar Google has now introduced a new ‘Stores’ menu item within the Shopping tab. When clicking on the menu, the results display stores that have a local inventory feed integrated, with the tab showing free local listing results. Within the US, the tab shows local pack results with the ‘sold here’ labels to show product relevance, whereas in Australia there is a dedicated local finder feature that shows GBP listings with the SWIS unit. Previously, the Shopping tab menu set would display with a ‘Nearby’ tab. First discovered by Sachin Patel. 05 Mar Google has now rolled out changes to how links can appear within AI Mode, with the core improvement being related to how links appear for recipe sites with a short overview and additional links. Sachin Patel also discovered that this scrollable feed for recipe sites may also be showing for product queries in some capacity. Feb 2026 28 Feb Google is now testing out a new structured section in brand knowledge panels displaying key business information. Instead of the standard approach featuring bolding and blue links, the information is now being presented in a table with formatting that is easier to skim through. 28 Feb Google is testing out a more prominent way to feature the AI Chat feature on brand knowledge panels. The AI Sales Assistant is now being labelled as an ‘Ask’ button rather than ‘Chat‘ or ‘Shop‘ like previously. The experiment appears to either show with the brand logo and name, or ‘Ask’ on its own with an AI Shopping icon. 18 Feb Google is now rolling out a new UI for citation links within AI Mode and AI overviews on desktop and mobile. This has been an experiment since around November of 2025, where once a citation is clicked, a scrollable feed appears. This was announced by Robby Stein. Jan 2026 29 Jan Google is now testing out an alternative to the follow-up prompts that appear at the bottom of the response with arrows (similar to a People Also Ask unit). The new test features shorter prompts in white bubbles that are more similar to how the query appears. First spotted by Sachin Patel. 16 Jan Google is now showing lighter colours for product availability and pricing within AI Mode. This change is part of an effort from Google’s end to make AI Mode distinct from the main search results following the announcement related to agentic shopping. Dec 2025 13 Dec Google is now testing out extremely long AI-generated snippets within search results. This is similar to the experiment from October, with the snippet now appearing much longer in some instances, rather than the standard 3 lines with the ‘more’ button like previously. It seems like this experiment is again confined to only forum results from Reddit and is showing on both mobile and desktop. 03 Dec Google is now testing out an extension to ads on mobile with an AI ‘what people are saying’ section related to the seller rating. To find the source of the review content, this is based on the information gathered on the store page URL e.g. https://www.google.com/storepages?q=nerdwallet.com&c=US, with the review summaries primarily showing within the US. It is worthwhile noting that the AI review summary provided within the ads is unique and doesn’t match the store page summary. This test was first spotted by Anthony Higman. 03 Dec Google looks to have now launched an image and file upload icon attached to their homepage on desktop by default in the US. When uploading a file, entering the search takes the user directly to AI Mode. The expectation here is that adding a file assumes that AI Mode is a more suitable surface. First spotted by Shameem Adhikarath. Nov 2025 27 Nov Google is now testing out inline citations within AI Mode, similar to what we have seen within AI overviews recently. Once the citations are clicked, a separate scrollable feed of links appears. 23 Nov Google is now testing out the ‘Ask anything’ in AI Mode feature on desktop, which was previously only showing on mobile since as early as August. The desktop experience is different to mobile in that it has a search box extension that contrasts the background once selected, leading users directly to AI Mode, with the unit appearing in addition to the standard PAA unit. This was recently spotted by Sachin Patel and others. 21 Nov Google is now showing ads within AI Mode for the first time ever. This was first discovered by Greg Sterling on LinkedIn who spotted them showing for an HVAC query, and I was able to replicate for an emergency plumbing query, for a shopping query and also Shopping ads themselves. This follows additional experimentation with inserting ads into AI overview answers, which are now appearing far more frequently since I first spotted them appearing earlier this year. 19 Nov Google is continuing to experiment with the product checkbox feature within AI Mode, now showing a button to ‘ask about these’ above the search bar, which triggers the checkbox feature beside products to appear. There have now been several variations of the product comparison checkbox display, with this change being an additional step to streamline the experience. 19 Nov Google is again showing citation footnotes within AI overview results, similar to the experiment from June. The latest version does not show the site name in full (only the first letter of the site name) alongside the favicon. Even when expanding the answer, the full site name still doesn’t display. 18 Nov Google is now testing out a ‘see more’ link to expand the AI citations within the desktop discover feed. This is after the recent experiment where the citations were hidden by default, with the latest variation making it clearer that the snippet and citations could be expanded. Once expanded, the ‘see more’ citations look the same as previous experiments. 17 Nov Google is continuing to test out the generative descriptions for results within AI Mode. Previously, we have seen the ‘what to know’ section showing on free listings, which has since become the default display in the US. The latest iteration includes a ‘what you need to know’ title for AI Mode products, and also a ‘what to know’ section also appearing for GBP listings. 15 Nov Google is testing out a new ‘track price’ animation for free listing results. Within the main search results section, the button goes blue, whereas in AI Mode free listings, the button goes grey. 11 Nov Google is now showing ads in AI overviews once again. This was spotted by Anthony Higman, who uncovered some text-based ads appearing when expanding the AI overview answer, which I was also able to replicate for another query. 10 Nov Google has recently been testing a different colour shade for the background in search results. While the test has been subtle, the light blue shade and cream shade for the background do look meaningfully different to the standard white background. 09 Nov Google is continuing to experiment with the Discover feed on desktop by making the AI links only visible after clicking and expanding the answer. This was first discovered by Damien Andell. When exposed to this treatment, the only link to the article itself that is shown by default is through the feature image. 07 Nov Google is now testing out an ‘ask stores’ section within the Shopping tab. The section features prominent related stores to the query with a ‘get advice’ CTA attached to them. When selecting the CTA, it then opens the sales assistant feature that has been showing in various capacities since November of 2024. This was originally discovered in September. 03 Nov Google is now showing free listing results more prominently within AI overviews. There are two versions of this experiment, one where the favicon and price are showing as an overlay, and another where the free listings appear more like a map pack. Oct 2025 24 Oct Google is continuing to test additional description link variations based on the original experiment that started in May. There are several new variations of this test featuring text such as a blue ‘see more’ link,  a ‘jump to’ link, along with a ‘read more’ link. 23 Oct As an extension to the recent AI description snippets test for web pages, Google is now testing a version that is unmarked without the AI ‘star’ icon for Reddit within the ‘discussions and forums’ unit on desktop. 19 Oct Google is now showing a ‘what to know’ section attached to free listing results within AI Mode. This feature is quite similar to the AI-generated product summaries from September, with the primary difference being the placement and the new heading. 17 Oct Google is again testing out link icons beside web page descriptions on desktop. The latest variation is most similar to the experiment from May, with a slightly different icon this time. There is also a ‘see more’ variation of this same test from July. First spotted by Sachin Patel. 15 Oct Google is now showing a competitor price history feature attached to free listing results. The feature appears when selecting the title ‘typically’, which has a drop-down showing the price history for retailers with in-stock products. 05 Oct Google is now integrating the AI Mode experience with AI overviews in a more seamless way on mobile, with the ‘show more’ button to expand the AI overview now leading directly to the AI Mode conversational chat experience. To identify the experiment, the line underneath the search bar menu item has a point connected to AI Mode. This test is an expansion of the search box test that appeared on desktop in August. First spotted by Harpreet. 05 Oct Google is now testing out an AI summary extension for mobile snippets in addition to the standard description section based on the meta description or website content. This test is separate but related to the Reddit AI description summaries, but can apply to websites outside of Reddit, with this variation also first spotted by Paul Shapiro. This was actually first discovere

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The connection between SEO tool scraping and increased impressionsTheories to support the increase in bot impressions in GSCExplanation of the measurement change in GSCHow SEO tool providers are respondingImportant GSC bot impression statsWhat outcomes can we expect?
On September 12th, the SEO community discovered that Google had disabled the ability to use the parameter &num=100, designed to enable 100 results as the default display rather than 10.
The consequence of this change was the impact on various rank tracking providers, with many relying on this parameter in order to deliver ranking data in an efficient way, now having the potential to increase the cost of retrieving a single result by 10 times.
An unexpected result of this change was a significant change to Google Search Console data, with impressions declining dramatically for many of the properties that I have access to, also corroborated by the broader SEO community.
When digging deeper into the change at the query and country level, the data wasn’t really adding up, which made me think that this is either a data discrepancy or a change to reporting in GSC. But the timing of the change to the disabling of &num=100 and the GSC reporting anomalies lined up too closely.
While I joked that GSC was a customer of DataForSEO, others, such as Mark Barrera and Malte Landwehr highlighted the connection between the spike in impressions in recent times and scraping from SEO tools.
Has “The Great Decoupling” that many of us have taken as fact, instead been related to the excessive increase in scraping from SEO tools?
[H2] The connection between SEO tool scraping and increased impressions
Looking at the GSC graph shown above, one of the early “decoupling” screenshots that was shared, which first kicked off the discussion around impressions increasing due to AI overviews, highlighted that the change first started around September of 2024, with other screenshots showing the increase at the beginning of 2025.
Google pushed back on many of the studies that highlighted that around the time of AI overviews ramping up as a SERP feature, this was when impressions first started to skyrocket, yet clicks weren’t following the same trend.
Instinctually, this made sense, and any pushback from Google felt disingenuous, considering that there were no promises being made of introducing an AI-related search appearance filter in GSC.
In retrospect, and seeing the impact that the disabling of &num=100 has had on SEO tools, the introduction of an AI-related filter in GSC may have only further reinforced what many suspected about the impact of AI overviews, but this conclusion may have still been inaccurate in some capacity.
When looking at the Semrush Sensor tool, it hasn’t been updated since September 10th (5 days ago), which is quite unusual for this tool. When checking my Semrush rank tracking projects, there are similar discrepancies where rankings have disappeared, and no data is showing.
Semrush Sensor showing no data since September 10th.
The date when the drop in impressions first occurred in GSC was also on September 10th. While the datasets are distinctly different (one is from Google directly and the other is external), it doesn’t appear to be a coincidence that the changes occurred around the same day.
Semrush SERP screenshots showing an error, when rankings didn’t actually drop out.
[H2] Theories to support the increase in bot impressions in GSC
When looking at the screenshot at the top of this post, which mirrors many other sites that I have access to, the decline in impressions in GSC is primarily from desktop, with mobile being impacted to a lesser extent.
For most SEO tool tracking projects, many will use desktop tracking as the default project setting. I don’t know exactly what the split would be among desktop and mobile, but I would expect that desktop would be much higher than mobile, with some tools only offering desktop tracking anyway.
The part of this situation that really blows my mind is the sheer number of impressions that were supposedly coming from bot impressions. In the example shown, the decline on desktop alone goes down by 200K+ daily impressions, which is honestly hard to believe that bot impressions could be this impactful.
Note: it is worthwhile highlighting that I did notice that not only impressions but also clicks in GSC (to a far lesser extent) were also impacted during this same timeframe since &num=100 was disabled. The Press Gazette recently put out an article detailing new research on the growth of AI bot traffic over time, likely having a connection to the change in clicks, where Google seems to be better at blocking or filtering out from their dataset.
The difficulty in comparing this data to earlier periods is that bot impressions will have always been consistent for sites in some capacity. But the ramping up of bot impressions has likely come about due to the increased competition within the AI Search space over this past year, which does line up closely with the original theories around The Great Decoupling.
Can’t help but wonder the connection between these two pic.twitter.com/1zwnOPqfXW— SERP Alert ⚡️ (@SERPalerts) September 14, 2025
Many suspect that the disabling of &num=100 is an intentional move to reduce external tracking services abusing Google’s systems, with there even being the potential that the recent news that ChatGPT is using SerpApi is another reason for this.
Another theory is that Google wants to put the bad press to rest regarding the impact of AI overviews. However, the impact of this argument becomes difficult to measure if you only have access to 16 months of, likely heavily influenced, bot impressions.
[H2] Explanation of the measurement change in GSC
For an impression to be recorded within GSC for an organic listing, the listing itself needs to appear on the current page, and the link needs to be visible to users. The listing itself, if located on the current page, doesn’t actually need to be scrolled into view in order to register an impression.
For a normal search result for a typical Google user, the default ‘current page’ would be 10 organic listings. Because rank trackers tend to use 100 organic listings as the default view, a result that ranks in position #99 would then incur an impression within GSC, even though it is a bot impression.
Average position in Google's AI Mode takes more of a sharp-left compared to the zig-zag of a traditional search results page.This approach tends to be more simplified in mobile search results (where the sequence is clear), with there being rules put in place for desktop that… pic.twitter.com/XAX6DbcwHn— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) June 23, 2025
This is a topic that I’ve written about extensively in the past, where I’ve done experiments for how data is recorded within GSC for both AI Overviews and within AI Mode. With there often being reasons for a significant impression spike without clicks, our GSC data has unfortunately been polluted with a lot of bot impressions over the past year, which has reduced the reliability of the dataset.
[H2] How SEO tool providers are responding
Here is a list of some of the most popular SEO tool providers and how they have responded to now being unable to use &num=100 to efficiently deliver the top 100 results.
Semrush: an update has been published that encourages users to consider the value behind both the top 10 and top 20 results. When checking position tracking data, it seems like Semrush is continuing to track rankings beyond position 20 as normal, but the wording within the published update makes it sound like this will likely need to change.
Ahrefs: Tim Soulo has hinted at effectively the same change as Semrush in a Twitter post, which has been shared to gain feedback from users on the value that they would receive through having rank tracking data beyond position 20. It appears as though Ahrefs data hasn’t been disrupted in the interim, also, based on a review of their data.
SerpApi: a solution has now been discovered from a prominent API provider for being able to scrape 100 results from a single request rather than 10. This has been described as the Google Fast Light API.
[H2] Important GSC bot impression stats
Research from the SEO community following Google disabling &num=100 suggests that bots have been a lot more impactful than we otherwise thought. Here are some stats related to studies that have been completed following the changes:
[IMG: google search console decoupling compared to rank tracking issues]
Key dates showing when decoupling vs. impact on impressions started.
87.7% of GSC properties experienced a drop in impressions following the change. – Tyler Gargula, LOCOMOTIVE (319 website dataset)
Average position declined significantly for positions 21+ directly following the change. – Matthew Mellinger (100+ website dataset)
The median impression loss shows a ~15% decline, with large websites having the highest concentration of the biggest impression drops. – Paul Grillet, ThotSEO (1334 website dataset)
There was an aggregate drop of 25% in impressions for the week after the changes were made. – Serge Bezborodov, JetOctopus, Barry Schwartz (1,000 website dataset)
Note: many rank trackers are starting to readjust their approach, so impressions will start to rise again. The most important datasets assessing the change are the ones that directly follow the decline (around September 13th), which will likely be the most accurate depiction of impressions and average position in GSC, according to how the data is measured and collected.
[H2] What outcomes can we expect?
Google is yet to comment publicly on this situation, but I suspect that they will need to given how impacted their dataset has been. If they don’t roll back the &num=100 change, then it is likely that rank tracking costs may soar, or we will be left with a top 20 result set (instead of top 100) as the default.
In terms of GSC data, it will be interesting to see how it is altered over the coming days and whether this dataset can be used to make more sense of the impact of AI overviews. It is important to note that Google has always been upfront with their stance on scraping since its inception.
My expectation is that this is very much an evolving situation, so stay tuned, and I’ll be sure to update this post once we receive official confirmation from Google or if I discover anything new that is worthwhile highlighting. At this stage, this does appear to be a permanent change, especially considering Google has published an ad with the job title: Engineering Analyst, Anti-scraper, Search.
Do I think that AI overviews weren’t actually impactful in a negative way? Not necessarily, but I do think that the 1st party data that we were working with was unfortunately not particularly accurate, if ‘Impressions’ and ‘CTR’ over the past year were the primary metrics used to support these conclusions.
Update: a Google Spokesperson has now commented on the situation:
“The use of this URL parameter is not something that we formally support.” – Google Spokesperson
Here are my final thoughts on the impact of &num=100 being disabled:
SEO Update: Final update on the &num=100 situation.We have now received a statement from Google related to the &num=100 parameter being disabled, with the response being somewhat unsurprising.While @rustybrick was seeking feedback on both the rank tracking implications and… pic.twitter.com/kh38nsweRV— Brodie Clark (@brodieseo) September 19, 2025
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Table of Contents

1. Cleaner grid display, without label overlays2. Product title source as the HTML title, not just the feed title3. Removal of feed-eligible product-specific reviews4. Currency reflected in product grids when relevantFinal thoughts
ChatGPT Shopping results have undergone the most significant update to their shoppable products integration since launch in April earlier this year.
At the time, I was quite critical of the integration of ChatGPT’s equivalent to free listing results on Google, highlighting key issues related to the mobile experience, inability to explore sources, and ineffective direct checkout links.
The article above also provides updates on developments within the generative Shopping results space over time, such as the introduction of AI Mode free listings, and the minor changes that happened with the introduction of GPT-5 with respect to Shopping.
Because I predominantly work with eCommerce stores, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the developments within this space to ensure my clients are kept updated. Overnight, ChatGPT has launched an upgrade to their Shopping results, here are the key aspects that have changed.
[H3] 1. Cleaner grid display, without label overlays
The clearest update to ChatGPT Shopping results relates to the display itself. The product grids are more visual, with the image taking up more space and no longer having the labels that are overlaid on the product images.
ChatGPT Shopping results evolution since launch in April 2025.
The “ChatGPT chooses products independently. Learn more” notice has also been removed. This linked documentation was previously located here but has since been moved here, without a redirect being put in place. The overall display change is clear for the Shopping results unit on ChatGPT on immediate review.
[H3] 2. Product title source as the HTML title, not just the feed title
Interestingly, I’m seeing many product titles being taken from the <title> tag from the website itself, rather than the product feed title which would normally match up reasonably well with Google (being the generation method within Google Shopping).
When looking at the product example on the far right above in the comparison, you can clearly see that the title matches up exactly with the <title> tag from the website. Previously, ChatGPT Shopping results were only using the feed title, with the latest update seemingly using a combination among the data sources.
ChatGPT Shopping results now sometimes using the <title> tag instead of the feed title.
This is a clear difference between ChatGPT Shopping and Google Shopping. Google will only ever use the feed title for free listing generation, which will match up perfectly with the information provided within the feed.
[H3] 3. Removal of feed-eligible product-specific reviews
Being a very clear copy cat moment for ChatGPT, the Shopping results are no longer using feed-eligible product reviews anymore. This is again a feature that Google has led the charge on with respect to Shopping results, with there either being the use of product-specific eligible reviews or reviews that contribute to the Seller Rating.
ChatGPT seems to have dropped reviews for products all together. This is an interesting move, as users of ChatGPT may be less influenced by reviews, given that ChatGPT is the recommendation engine for why there is credibility for the results in the first instance.
[H3] 4. Currency reflected in product grids when relevant
An issue that I noticed in the past with ChatGPT Shopping results is that the currency wasn’t always immediately clear when searching from different countries when using a VPN. I can see that the currency has now been reflected in the grid display when the currency is unexpected (using CAD when searching from the US, for instance).
In general, I would expect that ChatGPT should be doing a much better job here of converting the currency where relevant. Instead of showing the price in CAD, the price should automatically convert to USD within the grid results, similar to how Google Shopping would automatically present this information.
[H3] Final thoughts
Overall, it seems like ChatGPT has been less reliant on solely using their “partner” sources for result generation. When I say “partner”, I’m mostly meaning Shopify here, which seems to be the primary eCommerce platform where results are taken from. This can clearly be seen within the CDN for images when you click on each of the individual results, with images hosted on OpenAI being the alternative.
While the changes primarily seem to be focused on features and the aesthetics of the listings, I’m not seeing major changes with the types of websites that are being recommended within the results, aside from potentially seeing less recommendations for products stocked on Amazon and eBay, which had a heavy influence early on.Currently, ChatGPT sends very little traffic to product pages from these Shopping results. And in many cases, the URLs are hallucinated with the latest research by Ryan Law showing that 2.38% of all cited URLs from ChatGPT lead to a 404. I’ll be continuing to keep an eye on updates to ChatGPT Shopping results as they evolve, as I have since their launch.
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